Illustrator to ArcGIS

Crischan

Posted 01 June 2010 - 06:36 AM

Crischan

Master Contributor

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199 posts

Gender:Male

Location:Eberswalde, Germany

Interests:Spatial Information Design

Germany

Hi,

We are having an map (mainly lines for borders and rivers) as a freehand file and need this map to go into ArcMap for use as a background map later on.
We're not having Freehand, but Illy into which we imported the Freehand file. We then tried to export it as AutoCAD dwg and import this file into ArcGIS.
But: Except for the annotations only a very small number of lines appear! We investigated and think that ArcGIS ignores all Bezier curves. Can someome support that thought? And if so, is there a way to convert all bezier curves in Illy to polylines?

We don't have MapPublisher at hand, only ArcGIS 9.3 and Illustrator CS4.

Charles Syrett

Posted 01 June 2010 - 08:58 AM

Charles Syrett

Ultimate Contributor

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539 posts

Canada

I'm pretty familiar with this workflow, and I can help you out if you send the FreeHand file to me by private message. The workflow:

1. In FreeHand, use the Smooth Xtra to remove all beziers. (Where necessary, I'll add points into the lines first, to prevent long arcs from becoming straight lines.)2. Export to Illustrator.3. In Illustrator, export to .dwg.

Charles Syrett

Posted 01 June 2010 - 11:03 AM

Charles Syrett

Ultimate Contributor

Validated Member

539 posts

Canada

It did get through, and I was able to open both the files. I take it you want all the lines converted. I love these historical European maps! Looks like there was a lot going on in Germany in the 1600s.